In the Dark (7 page)

‘In
yourself
,' he'd said.

She could tell by the look on his face that he'd seen tears at this point in proceedings plenty of times before. That he was putting hers down to the hormone fairy overstaying her welcome. He proffered the box of tissues and asked if there was anyone she'd like to talk to. She shook her head and blew her nose, wondering how he'd react if she looked up and said, ‘I don't suppose you could get my boyfriend in here, could you? There's plenty
we
should be talking about . . .'

Helen hopped through the channels without finding anything she fancied. Decided that when Paul got home she'd tell him that, if they were strapped, they could save thirty-odd quid a month by getting shot of the satellite TV.

She brushed away the crumbs from her pyjama top and realised that it was wet. She pulled the back of her sleeve across her face, unwilling to get up and fetch tissues. She had no idea when Paul would be getting home, or where he would be getting home from, and acknowledged that this was the way things were now, more often than not.

Only so much any doctor could tell.

Every box ticked, except one.

 
The journey north took them the best part of an hour, and Theo only got the Audi above forty for about one minute of it. He enjoyed the thump of the extra bass-bins Easy had put into the back, though, and the leather seats, and the green LEDs on the dash.

Just beyond Highgate Village they cruised past a large house set well back from the road on the other side of a pond. Turned and cruised back again before parking up two streets away.

Theo turned down the music. ‘Place has got
pillars
, man.'

‘Yeah, and a proper damn alarm,' Easy said. ‘You not see that thing flashing?' He took a piece of paper from his pocket and studied it, shaking his head. ‘We just going in and out, man, five minutes. Don't need safes and antiques and all that.' He jabbed at another of the addresses on his list. ‘Let's try the one in Southgate.'

As Theo took the car back down towards the North Circular, Easy explained how it worked. He told him about his friend who worked as a baggage handler at Luton airport, and helped himself to the odd camera, MP3 player and the like. Who copied down home addresses from luggage tags which he passed on to Easy for a few quid and a wrap of something nice every now and again.

‘Everybody's happy,' Easy said.

‘Does Wave know about this?'

Easy drew his head back and stared. ‘What does that matter?'

Wave. Top man in the street crew. Plenty
he
was answerable to, of course; plenty nobody ever saw. But round the estates and on a few square miles of Lewisham streets, Wave was the one asking the questions.

‘Wave' because of the hair: the Afro that sort of fell from one side of his head to the other. And for other reasons of his own invention:
‘Because sometimes a wave can be there for everyone to enjoy. To ride on or to splash about in as they choose, you check me? Other times that thing can get big and come down like a tsunami or some shit. That wave can fuck you up if you don't watch out
.'

‘Said what the fuck does that matter?'

‘Just asking.'

‘This is
my
thing.'

‘Not a problem,' Theo said.

‘Wave got far too much else to worry about,' Easy said. ‘Plenty poking up his arse, remember?'

Theo nodded. Yeah, he remembered.

He finally got a chance to put his foot down on an empty stretch through Finchley, catching a couple of green lights on the bounce. He remembered Easy taking him through it all one night, a few weeks after he'd got back from Chatham. Sitting in a KFC with a Coke and nuggets, and Easy sketching out his world on a napkin.

Three triangles, one on top of the other.

‘This top one's like the upper distribution,' Easy said, stabbing at the highest triangle. ‘Import, smuggling operations, all that. Serious money, and most of it going in white pockets, you ask me.' He drew a line down to the middle triangle. ‘This is the warehousing and the factory, yeah? Breaking the gear up and cutting it. Them in white coats and what have you, chopping in the lactose and the caffeine powder and the rest of it.'

‘And laxatives, right?'

‘All that, yeah. Get off your face and shit your pants at the same time, whatever.' He moved slowly down to the bottom triangle and drew a line hard around the sides, the pen cutting through the napkin as he went over and over it. ‘This is where
we
are, which is the crucial part, you get me, T? Down here at the bottom you got your lookouts, that's important. And then moving up a bit there's the runners and the sellers going back and forwards all day from the street to the house, one in one out, with the money and the packages . . . And then right up near the tip of this triangle there's the men who are holding the cash and whoever's in charge of the stash, you with me?'

Theo turned the napkin around and stared at it.

‘And here's the beauty part,' Easy said. ‘Everyone can move up.' Now he demonstrated with his hands, moving them through the air. ‘
Everyone
, you listening? Moving up the sides of the triangle and further up from one fucker to the next.' He took the napkin back and pointed. ‘Right here, just below the tip of the bottom triangle, that's me, you get that? Number two and still climbing, OK?'

Theo nodded, seriously doubting it.

‘Up there at the top, that's Wave. He's like a pig in shit, for real, but there's serious pressure up there too, man.' Easy finished his Coke and sat back in his chair; started tearing the napkin into tiny pieces. ‘Plenty pressing down on you from up above, and
plenty
poking you in the arse . . .'

They pulled the same casual drive-past at a smallish semi in Southgate, and Easy told Theo to park at the end of the road. The house was between street lamps, with no sign of an alarm.

‘Sweet and simple,' Easy said.

He went to the boot and dragged out an empty suitcase. Pissed himself when Theo asked what it was for. ‘Well, it's handy for bringing stuff out, you get me? And I'm thinking, you know,
theirs
will be in Majorca or Lanzarote or whatever, same as they are.' He kissed his teeth and grinned. ‘And you're supposed to be the clever one . . .'

Once they were in the house, Easy had the DVD player in the case within a minute or two. He told Theo to stay downstairs and grab whatever else he could, while he went through the rest of the place.

Theo knew the house was empty, but it still scared him to see Easy charging about so full of himself. He crept around the kitchen and the living room, poked through a pile of magazines on a low table. There was a small office built in under the stairs; a computer tucked under the desk, a keyboard and large monitor on top. Theo nudged at the mouse with a gloved finger and a picture appeared on the screen: a woman and three children, beaming from a swimming pool; a multicoloured lilo and the sun bouncing off the water behind them.

A different holiday.

Easy came thumping down the stairs and Theo stepped away from the desk. He looked at the suitcase which Easy was now carrying with both arms. ‘Decent pickings?'

‘Another DVD in the kids' room, digital radio.' Easy slapped the suitcase. ‘Brand-new iPod in a box, man.' He nodded to Theo. ‘You?'

Theo pointed at the computer and shrugged. ‘Nothing portable, man. I reckon we're done.'

Easy looked around, then nodded and leaned in close to Theo. ‘I pissed on the bed up there.'

Theo stepped away, grimacing. ‘That is so completely rank, man.'

Easy was enjoying himself. ‘I never, man, fuck's sake, what do you think?' He hoisted up the suitcase. ‘Gonna start calling you “Toy”, T. Like one of them kid's things . . . robots or whatever. You are
so
easy to wind up.'

 
Helen woke at the noise of the key in the door and lay there listening to Paul coming in. The coughs and sniffs. The grunt as he dropped on to the sofa to take off his shoes.

She heard him going into the kitchen, heard the squeak of a cupboard door, and hoped that he was making himself something to eat. With luck, she might be asleep again by the time he came to bed.

He came into the bedroom a few minutes later and she stayed turned away from the door, knowing he was getting undressed as quietly as possible so as not to wake her. Laying his watch down nice and gently. She could smell garlic when he climbed in next to her and she knew that he'd been out to eat.

People from work, most likely.

It wasn't the first time that she'd asked herself if he might be having an affair, and she was still thinking about it when she heard his breathing shift, and knew he was asleep.

Not the first time, but as always there was one thought that nagged harder than the ‘Who?' and the ‘Where?' Harder even than the ‘How could you?'

One thought.

What right have I got to complain?

 
He could feel the cash in his back pocket when he sat down. He reached around and took out the notes, dropped them on the coffee-table. Two hundred in tens and twenties, Easy had given him. Passed them across when he'd dropped Theo off; before he'd pointed his fist towards Theo's and walked back around to the driver's side of the car.

‘What's this for?'

‘You helped out,' Easy said.

‘I did nothing.'

It was way too much. Theo knew that Easy wouldn't be getting anything like that for what they'd just lifted from that house. He guessed that his friend was just showing off.

But still . . .

‘This the kind of paper you could be getting,' Easy said. ‘If you moved up.'

‘And how's that happen?'

‘I talk to Wave and make it happen.'

‘Simple as that?'

‘You just need to move up that triangle, T.' Easy made that gliding motion with his hand again. ‘Spend a little more time indoors, get some of these kids running around for
you
. Come out on a few more trips like this with me, yeah? Fun
and
cash, what more d'you want, man?'

Theo thought briefly about waking Javine to show her the money, but he knew it was a stupid idea. She was like his mum: she didn't want to know. Right, Theo thought, but she liked the money well enough when she had it. She'd be trying to decide which shoes to buy while she was shaking her head and telling him she didn't want to know where the cash had come from.

But it had to come from somewhere, didn't it?

When the Audi had roared away, he'd seen a group of kids watching from the shadows near the garages; their looks eating up the car.

Now, he moved the cash to one side and put his feet up on the table. Sat there listening to the noises of the estate - to the rhythms and the raised voices that sang against the concrete - and tried not to think about a picture on a computer screen.

SEVEN

Paul had left home before seven, beating most of the traffic through Brixton and into Kennington, but he had clearly not been the only one hoping to get the office to himself for an hour or two. Quite a few early birds were wearing pinched, Monday-morning faces when he got in. Not that most of them didn't look every bit as pissed off on any other day of the week.

Happy coppers were the ones in sitcoms, or breathing in the funny-smelling smoke at music festivals.

The conversations over coffee and the first fag in the backyard all tended to meander back to the same topic: the fact that Paul hadn't been seen around the place a great deal of late.

‘Whose arse you been licking, you jammy sod?' was the friendliest of the comments. ‘Why should we sit here doing all the donkey work while you skive off and swan around, you lazy bastard?' was more typical.

Paul produced the same smug look as usual, and told them nothing. He knew they all had better things to worry about than what he was doing with his working day. He bonded and schmoozed where he needed to; drained the coffee and stamped on the fags so they could all get on with it.

By mid-morning he'd made a decent stab at clearing his desk, though there were still a good many ‘shit waiting' folders bulging in drawers or sitting on his computer. He'd fired off a dozen emails, completed the paperwork on as many requests for mobile-phone records and typed up surveillance logs for which he was being pestered by three different units. It was hard enough keeping up with the paper-chase when you were doing what you were
supposed
to . . .

‘Want to grab some lunch later?'

Paul looked up as DS Gary Kelly pushed aside a box file and leaned against the edge of his desk. ‘I can only pray you're not talking about the canteen.'

‘I was thinking about that Chinese place opposite Waterloo Station,' Kelly said. ‘Cracking all-you-can-eat of a lunchtime.'

‘Sounds good.'

‘I mean, you know, only if you're still
here
, obviously.' Kelly was short and sandy-haired, with a smile that changed his whole face, squashing his features. When Paul had first met him, he wasn't sure if people called Kelly ‘Spud' because of the Irish name or the potato face. ‘I know you've been
hugely
busy.'

‘Yeah, sorry, mate. Bits and pieces to sort out. You know how it is.'

Kelly leaned down, lowered his voice. ‘No, I don't, to be honest.' He nodded towards the nest of workstations. ‘I can understand you not wanting
this
lot knowing your business, but we go back a bit.'

Paul laughed. ‘There's no big mystery, I swear.'

‘So, let's have it then.'